Google's planned campus
rejected
The tide is turning against Google abroad and at home. A number of anti-trust rulings have gone against tech giant Google in Europe, with world governments seeking to rein the company in. Now problems are cropping up in Google's backyard, namely Mountain View, California, where the company is headquartered. The city of Mountain View has awarded smaller tech company, LinkedIn, a massive swathe of land, rejecting Google's bid for the property.
In what is being described as a "stinging defeat" for Google, the city awarded LinkedIn 1.4 million square feet. Google was award a much smaller parcel consisting of 515,000 square feet, which is inadequate to build the company's new dream campus, which would have consisted of four huge buildings. Google angrily protested the news, with its real estate representative stating, "To have one building — it’s a significant blow. I’m not sure how I make any of this economically viable with one building."
STORY SOURCE
LinkedIn Foils Google’s
Ambitious Office Plans in Mountain View
May 6, 2015, 3:22 PM PDT - In February, Google unmasked a blueprint for a massive expansion of its mothership — four futuristic, eco-friendly campus sites, designed by star architects “to blur,” in Google’s words, “the distinction between our buildings and nature.” Last night, the Mountain View city council put the kibosh on that plan.
By a 4-3 vote, the council approved just one site for Google, stretching 515,000 square feet. It gave the bulk of available real estate — two-thirds of 2.2 million square feet — to LinkedIn. Silicon Valley Business Journal has the (lengthy) deets. David Radcliffe, Google’s chief of real estate, reportedly protested to the city council: “I’m not sure how I make any of this economically viable with one building.”...
In stinging defeat for Google,
LinkedIn scores lion's share of real estate capacity in Mountain
View's North Bayshore
The city council handed LinkedIn about 1.4 million square feet, the lion’s share of roughly 2.2 million square feet of available commercial square footage for the area. Google came away with 515,000 square feet — enough for just one piece of its futuristic four-part campus expansion. Your user’s guide to Mountain View’s real estate judgment day
“To have one building — it’s a significant blow,” David Radcliffe, vice president of real estate and workplace services for Google, told the council before the vote. Google representatives declined to talk to me after the meeting.
The outcome is clearly a huge disappointment for Google, which had requested essentially all of the available office space in February under a new city land-use plan that saw way more demand than supply. While no one expected Google to get all of its request, the relatively small allocation clearly stung the search giant, and a visibly upset Radcliffe openly questioned the reduced project’s feasibility.
